Facebook announced its new Internet.org platform this week, which includes “non-exclusive partnerships with mobile operators to offer free basic Internet services to people through Internet.org.” While this sounds good and noble in a press release, detractors to the project, including Josh Levy, the advocacy director at a global digital rights group, said Internet.org is really Facebooknet because Facebook is holding the keys to the gate of a walled garden and, you know, that’s not so much for Net Neutrality.

Comcast may have lost the war, but it spent some coin in its various battles to buy Time Warner. Ars Technica, which took a look at Comcast’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2015, notes $99 million listed in transaction-related costs. This is just another round on the tab however, as Comcast has spent a total (so far) of $336 million dollars spent in the $45.2 billion FAIL.

Rumors of a new Apple TV box have been in the wind the past few weeks, and now Brian X. Chen of The New York Times reports that Apple is also revamping the minimalist remote control that comes with the box. The Apple Watch is also getting some design scrutiny, but this time, it’s from developers and curious members of the public who have discovered a secret charging port hidden in the connection slot of the lower watch band. At least one accessory maker, Reserve Strap, says the hidden jack is a six-pin diagnostic port that can be used for charging — and it plans to release a tool for connecting to the jack when it releases its $250 battery band this fall. Let’s see if Apple allows that, as it has just released its own developers’ guide for third-party watch bands.

NASA is developing its own 10-engine drone for use in science missions that can take off vertically like a helicopter and then fly like an airplane. The drone’s name is GL-10 and the GL stands for: Greased Lightning. (If you are of a certain age, you will now have the soundtrack from Grease stuck in your brain for the rest of the day.)

As for good news on the app-security front, the MIT Technology Review reports that some security researchers in France have come up with an automated system that can tell when Android apps on your phone or tablet quietly connect to user-tracking and ad-serving sites online. They plan to make their new program available soon in the Google Play store soon under the name No Such App, or NSA for short.

And finally, did you complain when Foursquare split itself into two and called the other half Swarm — and all the mayorships, badges and points went away? The Foursquare blog announced this week that it plans to bring back the mayorships to Swarm and now you can unlock brand new stickers instead of the old badges. The people have spoken and have been heard — we want civic leadership in our apps!

In other legal news, Sony is alsogetting sued by two former employees who claim the corporate IT department knew the company network was vulnerable and did nothing to shore it up, leading to the lost of personal data. And a jury in California found Apple not guilty in that antitrust lawsuit that claimed Apple was erasing music from competing online music stores from iPods that were sold between 2006 and 2009. Lack of plaintiffs probably didn’t help the case.

While they may be foes in the marketplace, Apple, Verizon, Amazon, HP and other companies are rallying around Microsoft in a legal battle with the US government over data privacy. As reported on a Microsoft blog, ten “friend of the court” briefs were filed and signed by 28 leading technology and media companies, 35 leading computer scientists, and 23 trade associations and advocacy organizations. The briefs have been filed regarding the case about the government’s search warrant for customer data stored on servers in Ireland — and Microsoft not wanting to turn it over.

Just in case we didn’t have enough options, Bose Electronics might be getting into the streaming music business. According to the Hypebot blog, Bose currently has an ad seeking “a Senior User Experience Designer to work on prototyping Bose’s next generation streaming music platform and ecosystem of products.” Well, now.

The Washington Post has a story up this week about the most popular websites every year since 1996. Remember online life in 1996? There were only about 100,000 websites out there and Google.com hadn’t even been invented yet. People were getting online with their 28.8K or 33.6K dial-up modems, which meant we never complained about not being able to get FiOS because it didn’t exist yet.

And finally, speaking of Google, the company has published its annual Year in Search list with the Global Top Trending Searches of 2014:

The Massive Sony Hack didn’t crack the top ten here. But hey, with the way things are going for the company, there’s always next year.

Splitting up app services seems to be a popular move. Foursquare recently divided its eponymous mobile software for checking into places and reviewing them into two apps They are Foursquare and the new Swarm app, available for Android and iOS. Swarm is now the app required for all the check-in-with-your-pals activity, while Foursquare has been transformed into a user-reviews database. The split has gotten media criticism and a fair amount of backlash from users who are checking outof Swarm, but the company did just release another update earlier this week. (Yelp, the service Foursquare seems to competing with most, updated its own mobile app this week and now allows users to add short video clips to their reviews.)

And about apps… there are new reports of a security problem with the way apps are identified by Google’s Android operating system. The research team at Bluebox Security says the new “Fake ID” vulnerability that it has just discovered allows malicious applications to essentially copy the identity certificates and credentials of trusted apps and get into places where malware is normally not allowed. The research team said this security hole has been around since Android version 2.1 in January 2010 and devices that haven’t been updated with last April’s patch for Google bug 13678484 are vulnerable. Bluebox waited 90 days to publicize its findings so Google had time to get out the April patch.

A lower-cost cable plan that brings broadband, basic channels and HBO for about $49-a-month is said to be in the works. The budget package had a trial run with Comcast last year. Game of Thrones for fewer bones, perhaps?

This week we channel our inner AV club as El Kaiser reviews a USB headphone amp and digital to analog converter called the Dragonfly from Audioquest and J.D. takes a look at how to deal with DVD region codes. Yes, DVDs. You remember? Shiny disk that looked like CDs and every PC and laptop used to have a drive that could read them…

In the news Facebook officially splits off their popular Messenger feature; Foursquare looks to improve it’s new Swarm app; Yelp allows users to post videos along with their reviews; Google addresses another major Android security vulnerability; Apple goes shopping; Napster announces it has passed the 2 million user mark, Bose and Beats Electronics go toe to toe over noise cancellation; the Chinese government investigates Microsoft over anti-trust concerns; and the Mars Opportunity Rover breaks a record.